As she showed in Ex Machina and The Danish Girl – and as the producers who cast her in the Tomb Raider reboot failed to grasp – Alicia Vikander can express a lot while doing very little. In this intriguing but initially slow eight-part exercise in showbiz navel-gazing, the Oscar-winner plays Mira, an American film star hired to front a French auteur’s remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic 1916 silent serial Les Vampires (about a criminal gang, partly led by the anagrammatical Irma Vep, rather than about undead bloodsuckers).
By taking on the role of Irma, Mira (see what they did there?) is seeking not only artistic credibility but also distance from a car-crash love life. She left her superstar male lover for her female assistant Laurie (Adria Arjona), only to see Laurie marry the man who helmed her last superhero blockbuster. Vikander plays mixed-up Mira with a quiet brittleness that is mesmerising. “You have a magnetic presence,” says her new director René Vidal (Vincent Macaigne). Well yes, she does.
